Psychic Sally awarded payout for 'cheat' claim

Television psychic Sally Morgan was awarded damages at the High Court yesterday over claims that she had used an earpiece to get instructions during a stage show.

The claim that she had cheated an audience in Dublin in September 2011 was first made during a phone-in on Irish radio.

Two women who were at the performance claimed on air they were sitting at the back of the theatre and thought they heard two crew members ‘saying something which Mrs Morgan had then repeated on stage’.

The High Court, pictured, awarded the damages to psychic Sally Morgan

The 61-year-old, known as ‘Psychic Sally’, has performed in shows on ITV2 and Sky Living and in more than 100 theatres worldwide.

Mrs Morgan dismissed the allegation as ‘nonsense’ but it was repeated in a later article by the magician Paul Zenon which appeared in the Daily Mail and on Mail Online, published by Associated Newspapers. Her solicitor, Graham Atkins, told the court that the claim she had cheated ‘caused enormous distress to Mrs Morgan’.

He said the article – ‘a general attack on psychics as being charlatans’ – accused Mrs Morgan of receiving instructions from her team and repeating them on stage at the Dublin show as if ‘she had received them from the spirit world’.

Mr Atkins said the allegation that she had cheated the audience in Dublin by receiving instructions via an earpiece was ‘completely false and defamatory of her’.

Associated Newspapers accepted the allegation was untrue and apologised unreservedly.